LANSING – As Mitt Romney kicked off a fundraising and campaign swing through the Detroit area today, he’ll have to answer to Michigan voters for his advocacy of auto industry bankruptcy in 2008. After continually criticizing the President’s plan to rescue the auto industry from collapse, his visit to Detroit won’t be the happy homecoming he’d hoped for.

In a 2008 New York Times Op-Ed, entitled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” Mitt Romney argued against the loan packages President Obama extended to General Motors and Chrysler. The President’s action to rescue the industry came under criticism from Romney and Republicans, but it has paid off and an industry that supports 1.4 million American jobs is hiring again. Recently, GM announced 2,500 new jobs in Hamtramck, and Chrysler will add another 1,200 at Jefferson North Assembly in Detroit.

“Mitt Romney’s Michigan Hypocrisy Tour won’t be the happy homecoming he’s hoping for. In fact, I don’t think we’ve seen a less inviting homecoming since LeBron went back to Cleveland,” MDP Chair Mark Brewer said. “While he’s here profiting off of Michigan, we have a few questions about his 2008 plan that would have let the American auto industry collapse and ruin Michigan’s economy. Romney’s not here to help Michigan, he’s here to fill his campaign coffers and get a couple photo-ops in a state he wrote off in 2008.”

Questions Romney Doesn’t Want to Answer in Michigan:

1) Are you trying to set the world record for hypocrisy by holding fundraisers in a state whose leading industry you wanted to go bankrupt?

2) Under your plan, where were Michigan small businesses to turn to for customers, and what were Michigan communities supposed to do for revenue after you bankrupted the auto industry?

3) If your plan was to let an industry that supports the employment of 1.4 million Americans die, what jobs would replace those lost?